Using textures as backgrounds - update 2019

Hello people,

I usually use my own textures and the ones I purchase from other artists to process my photographs, e.g. giving them a more painterly look or texturizing Negative Space.

Only recently I began to use them more as backgrounds for some more abstract works or still lives and such. So this short post's purpose is to show you how I created one of my abstract plant designs.


Have a look at this gif

For some years I own a small Cycas palm plant that once in a while sprouts new leaves. I am always fascinated bythese beautifully enfolding  new palm leaves - so I took some images and more or less forgeot about them . But recently I came across these images while going throw my archives and thought that they might make a nice decorative abstract.

So I cut them out and copied the leaf I cut out and arranged them on three different layers. I didn't want to simply reflect them, so no symmetrical composition.

After some time of applying different textures I decided on Sky Dive as the main background. As these leaves seem to reach out onto something I had the idea to add a somewhat stylized sun, so I took the golden texture Scratches and masked all but a circle and had my sun.

As always a screen shot of the layers in PS:

After some minor light and contrast tweaks I had my abstract plant image.

Meanwhile I did a few more plant compositions, have a look:

What are you textures using for in your creative work?

Thanks for reading!

Dirk